Wednesday, 27 April 2005
I called in at a souvenir shop in the main street where I was met by a young Ethiopian, who had somehow got himself married to a T.I. girl. His wife's mother owned the shop which he now managed. They had three lovely children but after five years on T.I., he seemed to be getting restless. He was enrolled in some business studies and wanted to become an accountant but felt that the longer he stayed on T.I. the more his self-confidence eroded. He didn't know that he was suffering from - nor had he heard of the term - "rock fever" which originated among servicemen stationed in Hawaii during World War II. It meant a sudden and desperate need to escape to the mainland.
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The hotel owners' dog Scrubby-Doo had taken a fancy to me and sat outside my room
whenever I was in. And as soon as I went for a walk, so did Scrubby-Doo!
Picked up a copy of the local newspaper, the TORRES NEWS. It's so boring
that even the dogs fall asleep bringing it in.
Most newspapers are advertisements wrapped in a few news stories; this one is
advertising wrapped in advertising and what's worth reading can be read in
two minutes - by a very slow reader! My suggestion to the editor would be
to write his paper with his trousers down, so that readers may hear what he has
to say more clearly.
What a change from the late Gwen Maloney's old "Birthday Book"
which had been unashamedly parochial and gave all the latest gossip of who had done
what and to whom and with whom. A small half-Irish, half-Filipino woman, she had been a lifelong
resident of the island and had seen Douglas Fairbanks come ashore from his yacht.
Her house with the old "Observation Perch" on the balcony
was still there, overlooking the Royal Hotel. Met her son Michael who still lived
on T.I. and was just then setting new steel fenceposts into concrete. Seeing the delapidated
state of his mother's old house, I couldn't help myself warning him not to over-capitalise!
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